By Mark F. Gray, Special to the AFRO, mgray@afro.comPrince George’s County Police are mourning the loss of one of their own after a motorcycle crash claimed the life of an off duty officer in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Officer Davon McKenzie, 24, was killed in a multi-vehicle crash while riding his motorcycle off the Capital Beltway in Largo, according to Maryland State Police who is handling the investigation.“The Prince George’s County Police family is brokenhearted at the loss of this young officer and only son,” said Prince George’s County Police Chief Hank Stawinski in a statement. “He was well respected and loved by his fellow officers. I, on behalf of all of us who were at the hospital and all those who couldn’t be, extend our deepest condolences to his family.”Officer Davon McKenzie, 24, while riding his motorcycle off duty, was killed in a multi-vehicle crash on I-495. (Courtesy Photo)McKenzie had been with the department since 2017 and was assigned to the patrol unit. He also was a school resource officer in Prince George’s County Public Schools.According to police accounts McKenzie was riding his Suzuki motorcycle on the Capital Beltway between Maryland Route 202 and Arena Drive shortly after 11:20 p.m. Tuesday evening when a Nissan Altima was attempting to merge onto southbound Interstate I-495 from Maryland Route 202 when it struck a commercial street sweeper in the slow lanes near the ramp.The driver of the Nissan then lost control and veered across all of the southbound lanes and struck McKenzie’s motorcycle that was in the fast lane which impact threw McKenzie from the motorcycle, over the wall and into oncoming traffic, where he was struck by two northbound vehicles.All vehicles involved in the crash remained on the scene. McKenzie was transported to the University of Maryland Prince George’s Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead.“Today we mourn the loss of Officer Davon McKenzie, who in addition to serving the Prince George’s County community served PGCPS students directly as a School Resource Officer at William Wirt Middle School,” PGCPS tweeted Wednesday morning. We send love to his family, department and all who knew him.”read more

Science, which focuses on facts, experimental validation and purported lack of social considerations, seems to be the last place where you could find gender disparity, but as experts say that it is a human activity after all and its practitioners, who largely happen to be men, cannot ignore their conscious or unconscious perceptions. Thus there have been no lack of erroneous assumptions about the sidelining of women in the scientific world. Also Read – Add new books to your shelfBut while these have been largely remedied, the proportion of women in the field happens to be smaller than needed and while there can be steps taken by the governments, it also needs women to increasingly plump for careers in this field, said an all-women panel, which included an iconic entrepreneur, a theoretical physicist and a science communicator.Initiating debate on “Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong”, moderator and journalist Namita Bhandare cited the TV pictures of sari-clad women scientists everytime India successfully tests a rocket or places satellites into orbit, but said this obscures the fact that only 20 per cent of employees at Indian Space Research Organization are women and no woman has ever headed the organisation. Also Read – Over 2 hours screen time daily will make your kids impulsiveEven Charles Darwin, who revolutionized science through his theory on natural selection, subscribed to the notion that women may be morally superior to men but intellectually inferior, she said. While this can be dismissed at the perception of his Victorian-era millieu, she noted that this still persisted in today and gave rise to the key question: Are women equipped to work in the field of science?Author Angela Saini, whose book inspired the title of the session and was the basis of the discussion, said that scientific studies questioning women’s ability to pursue science were often marred with observer bias as humans studying humans leads to dubious conclusions since researchers cannot entirely abandon their prejudices. Citing one such research which claimed that since women have a smaller brain, they are intellectually inferior to men, Saini said: “Had larger brains led to more intelligence, whales would have been the smartest species.” Stressing that size of brain is not an indicator of cognitive ability, she said while it was true that men and women had different brains, it was also true that “every single one of us has a different brain”.”Looking for group differences isn’t helpful, because individual differences are far more pronounced,” she said.Biocon founder and chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, said that questions over women’s supposed inferiority were a matter of nature versus nurture, and was “really about how you are raised.” She added that her father was a huge influence on her as he backed her to do unconventional things, such as study brewing.Noting that in India, 46 per cent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Management) jobs at the entry level are occupied by women, she said that the numbers dwindle as you go up the hierarchy, as most companies use a review system to hire people at higher positions and since most of the reviewers are men, this leads to the skewed ratio.Harvard University professor and theoretical physicist Lisa Randall urged all women in the audience and elsewhere to pursue science. “You must want to do science and see real opportunity in it,” she said, adding that “big ideas are really fun to work on”.While Bhandare stressed that the common mindset of prefacing a successful woman’s achievements with the words “despite being a woman” must change. Mazumdar-Shaw said that unlike men, women often have to cross a “credibility curve”, putting in a lot more effort to prove that they are worthy. However, she added that once you cross it, people recognise you purely for your talent. Citing her own example, she said, that today she is not merely recognised as a “woman business leader”.She also noted that there were places where there was a conscious effort to promote women, citing the case of ICICI Bank, which accounted for four prominent Indian women bankers of the present, including its chief, Chanda Kochhar.All the panelists agreed that if tangible change is to be seen, women must themselves take the lead for more of them take up science and technology, the perception that women can’t do science will dissipate.read more